Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Aichi 464-8601, Japan.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2012 Jun;84(3):277-83. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2012.03.006. Epub 2012 Apr 9.
Individual differences in baseline executive functioning (EF) capacities have been shown to predict state anxiety during acute stressor exposure. However, no previous studies have clearly demonstrated the relationship between EF and physiological measures of stress. The present study investigated the efficacy of several well-known EF tests (letter fluency, Stroop test, and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test) in predicting both subjective and physiological stress reactivity during acute psychosocial stress exposure. Our results show that letter fluency served as the best predictor for both types of reactivity. Specifically, the higher the letter fluency score, the lower the acute stress reactivity after controlling for the baseline stress response, as indicated by lower levels of state anxiety, negative mood, salivary cortisol, and skin conductance. Moreover, the predictive power of the letter fluency test remained significant for state anxiety and cortisol indices even after further adjustments for covariates by adding the body mass index (BMI) as a covariate. Thus, good EF performance, as reflected by high letter fluency scores, may dampen acute stress responses, which suggests that EF processes are directly associated with aspects of stress regulation.
个体在基线执行功能（EF）方面的差异已被证明可以预测急性应激暴露期间的状态焦虑。然而，以前的研究并没有清楚地表明 EF 与应激的生理测量之间的关系。本研究调查了几种著名的 EF 测试（字母流畅性、斯特鲁普测试和威斯康星卡片分类测试）在预测急性心理社会应激暴露期间的主观和生理应激反应方面的功效。我们的结果表明，字母流畅性是预测这两种反应类型的最佳指标。具体来说，在控制基线应激反应后，字母流畅性得分越高，急性应激反应越低，表现为状态焦虑、负性情绪、唾液皮质醇和皮肤电导率水平越低。此外，即使通过进一步调整体重指数（BMI）作为协变量来添加协变量，字母流畅性测试的预测能力对于状态焦虑和皮质醇指数仍然是显著的。因此，高字母流畅性分数反映的良好 EF 表现可能会抑制急性应激反应，这表明 EF 过程与应激调节的某些方面直接相关。
